He made as if to draw up at the house of a well-known doctor in the town, but Sarah stopped him before he reached the kerb. "Nay, nay," she said nervously, "it'll likely bide. I don't know as I'm that fain to hear what he's got to say. Anyway, I'd a deal sooner get my marketing done first."
So instead of stopping they went straight to the inn where they had put up on market-day for the last forty years, and where Simon's father had put up before Simon was born. Turning suddenly across the pavement through a narrow entry, they plunged sharply downhill into a sloping yard. The back premises of old houses shut it in on every side, lifting their top windows for a glimpse of the near moor. The inn itself, small and dark, with winding staircases and innumerable doors, had also this sudden vision of a lone, high world against the sky.
An ancient ostler came to help Simon with the horse, while Sarah waited on the sloping stones. The steep yard was full of traps, pushed under sheds or left in the open with their shafts against the ground. Fleming's dog-cart was there, with its neat body and light wheels; but May was already gone on her business in the town. Simon had an affection for a particular spot of his own, and it always put him about to find it filled. It was taken this morning, he found, though not by May. May would never have played him a trick like that. It was a car that was standing smugly in Simon's place, with a doubled-up driver busy about its wheels. Cars were always intruders in the cobbled old yard, but it was a personal insult to find one in his 'spot.' He went and talked to the driver about it in rising tones, and the driver stood on his head and made biting comments between his feet. A man came to one of the inn windows while the scene was on, and listened attentively to the feast of reason and the flow of soul.
Sarah looked rather white and shaky by the time Simon returned, thinking of something new to say to the very last. He left the newest and best unsaid, however, when he saw her face.
"You'd best set down for a bit," he observed, leading her anxiously towards the inn. "You're fretting yourself about seeing doctor, that's what it is. You'd ha' done better to call as we come in."
But Sarah insisted that she was not troubling about the doctor in the least. She had been right as a bobbin, she said, and then she had suddenly come over all queer. "Happen it's standing that long while you and morter-man sauced each other about car!" she added, with shaky spirit. "You made a terble song about it, I'm sure. Trap'll do well enough where it is."
"I can't abide they morter-folk!" Simon muttered, crestfallen but still vexed. "But never mind about yon. Gang in and set you down. If I happen across May, I'll tell her to look you up."
A door opened at the end of the dark passage, showing a warm parlour with flowers and crimson blinds. The stout landlady came swimming towards them, speaking as she swam, so that the vibrations of her welcoming voice reached them first like oncoming waves. Another door opened in the wall on the right, and a man looked out from the dim corner behind.
"That you, Mrs. Thornthet? What?--not so well? Nay, now, it'll never do to start market-day feeling badly, I'm sure! Come along in and rest yourself by t'fire, and a cup of tea'll happen set you right."
Sarah, shaken and faint, and longing to sit down, yet hesitated as if afraid to step inside. It seemed to her, as she paused, that there was some ordeal in front of her which she could not face. Her heart beat and her throat was dry, and though she longed to go in, she was unable to stir. The man inside saw her against a background of misty yard, a white face and homely figure dressed in threadbare black. Once or twice his gaze left her to dwell on Simon, but it was always to the more dramatic figure that it returned. There was a current in the passage, full and sweeping like the wind that went before the still, small Voice of God. Sarah was caught by it, urged forward, filled with it with each breath. But even as she lifted her foot she heard a woman's voice in the room beyond.